Wednesday got off to a foggy start so we didn't rush into the great outdoors. In fact we'd had lunch before we'd decided on a plan for the rest of the day. The sun was breaking through so we decided to head north, east and then south along the coast to Blue Hill Mountain. The coastline here is made up of continual inlets and small peninsulas so any driving tends to involve a lot of upping and downing to get relatively short distances as the bald eagle flies. Blue...

We had to get our skates on to return the hire car to (H)etrz at Bangor International Airport, about an hour's drive away. This meant that Jill had to brave the dual challenge of driving an automatic car on the wrong, that's the right, side of the road for the first time whilst we've been away. She'd taken the house swap car out for a little test drive yesterday just to get the feel of it: fortunately the swap car is a C-class Mercedes so very like our car and th...

Our last night in Canada was spent in a heavily over chintzed room at the Owen House Inn, can't say we were sorry to leave that but we were sorry to leave Canada. We had an amazing seven weeks, we did so many wonderful things, saw so many fantastic sights and met so many friendly, generous Canadians. But we couldn't be sad for long as we start the next part of our North American adventure. And we were definitely excited to be crossing into USA. It's probably tr...

Breakfast at Owen House is a single sitting at 8:30am with a wake-up call at 8:00am in case any guest might oversleep and inconvenience the staff....it is an odd sort of place! The staff are friendly and the rooms comfortable (if way over chintzed!) but the manager doesn't quite have the social skills to make it a truly comfortable place and we suspect that she's not too easy to work for! However breakfast was hearty as ever and well-sustained we set off in drizz...

McLaughin's Wharf Inn did have another guest staying last night but there was no sign of him at breakfast so we had the place and Anne's attention to ourselves again. We were packed and ready to leave by 8.30am with a view to catching the 9.30am ferry back to the mainland. Brenda, the owner, came over to see us off. Grand Manan had been a beautiful and quirky place, very friendly, quite old-fashioned and with the lobster fishing industry evident everywhere. Anoth...